


night terror

by stannide



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 22:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3185150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stannide/pseuds/stannide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst is over until Sasuke closes his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	night terror

It starts as his nightmares always do.

By now, this is a path he is deeply acquainted with, worn like the pages of a book well-read.  He walks the streets of the old compound.  In the moonlight, the pavement glows as though awash with a million sparkling rubies.  

There is enough blood for his kin to drown in.  

And that they do.  Like their bodies were tiny boats cast ashore on a scarlet sea.  Flotsam, jetsam.  Little is left now of the great Uchiha but a hundred lolling mouths and vacant gazes.  Into what abyss do their fearsome dark eyes bore into now?  He has contemplated it countless times in the dark of night.  Where have they gone that he cannot follow?

This time, he remembers to step over his granduncle’s corpse as he turns for the main house.  

(When he was eight, he’d stubbed his toe on a cold, knobby knee, falling headfirst into a puddle of the man’s blood.  Sasuke could taste the last of his granduncle’s life on his tongue for months afterward.  No matter how many times he scrubbed his mouth.)

He is careful like usual when he arrives at the sliding door.  He remembers to lift the door as he pushes it back so it doesn’t drag noisily against the floor.  Not that there is any use in his delicacy.  Even the most incessant rattling won’t wake his mother from her slumber now.  It is a wonder that in times like these, instinct overrides terror.  Sasuke even remembers to leave his sandals on the rack.

Bare feet trace the blood splatters on the tatami mats.  The blood is thicker and wetter the closer he pads to the living room.  He can already see his parents’ remains on the back of his eyelids. His father’s hands, which had seemed so large and powerful in life, had curled in death like a withered flower.  His mother’s rosebud lips had been pale, two slivers of the moon on her lovely face.

But when Sasuke opens the last sliding door, it isn’t his parents he sees.

Thirteen and trembling, Sakura stands with her back flat against the wall.  Her hair is messily shorn.  Cuts and bruises litter her skin.  She looks out of one eye; the other is blackened and swollen.  A kunai quivers in her hand. 

This isn’t how the nightmare is supposed to go.  

"Sakura…  Who did this to you?"

The young kunoichi only whimpers in response.  Sasuke steps forward.  His hands go at once to the katana strapped at his hip.  He is ready to face her nightmares for her.  His gaze follows hers. If it is his brother or that Sound nin—

Familiar laughter interrupts the terrible silence of the evening.

His foe is not his brother.  This person is younger, angrier.  His foe is not the Sound ninja.  This person is older, harder.

Sasuke is face-to-face with himself.  Seventeen and invincible.  The grin on his younger face is manic.  

"You think you can defeat me, old man?"  The boy laughs, and a thousand birds laugh with him.  Lightning dances over his arm.  Behind them, tears have begun to spill from beautiful green eyes.  Sasuke unsheathes his katana and stands in front of Sakura.

Undeterred, the boy continues to walk toward the girl.  His teeth are bright with blood.

"There’s nothing you can do to save her," the boy says.  "Sakura will die just like Father.  Just like Mother.  And do you know why?"

The Chidori flickers out.  A red cloud passes over the moon.

They are blanketed in darkness.

"Sakura!" Sasuke calls.  "Saku—”

The moonlight returns, and, suddenly, the boy is nowhere to be found.  It is only Sasuke.  It is only the man.

It is him facing the young girl.  It is him whose arm is aglow with furious lightning.  It is him that steps toward her as the harbinger of death.

The kunai trembles in her small hands.

_Run_ , he tries to scream, but he cannot move his mouth.   _Run, Sakura, run, I’m begging you to—_

"Don’t you see, old man?  You and I…"  

His glowing hand whips out to pierce her heart.  She screams and screams and screams.

There is endless laughter in his mind.

"We will destroy her."

.

.

.

Back then, she hadn’t understood why he wouldn’t sleep beside her.  

For many months, he left promptly after spending himself.  In his wake, she held the fragments of her heart together with the desperation of a child collecting rainwater in cupped hands.  

She couldn’t know that he still remembered the way her neck felt in the palm of his hand.  

White and thin and trembling.  A sliver of the moon.

.  
  


.

  
.  
  


"—run!  Sakura, run!"

Sasuke bolted upright, his sole arm outstretched.  To save her or to slay her, he didn’t know.  His lungs took up air like he’d been suffocating for hours.  

Beside him, Sakura shifted.

He lowered his arm.  Calloused fingers fell to the sheets, not far from the graceful plane of her back.  His skin ached to feel the warmth of her, the rhythm of her breathing.  But Sasuke didn’t dare touch her.

In his stillness, he watched her.  The sheets had left shallow imprints on her cheek.  Her legs were splayed ungracefully, icy toes brushing against his bare legs.  Her hair was a haphazard mess atop the pillowcase.  Her lips, full and pink, were open in a light snore.  There was saliva at the corner of her chin.

She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

A hesitant arm wound around her waist.  Slowly, his forehead brushed the back of her head.  He breathed in the scent of apples.

Sasuke didn’t realise he was sobbing until she stirred in his embrace.  

"Sa…  Sasuke?"

She turned.  Gentle hands caressed his cheeks.  Her thumbs swept like fans over his skin.  He was crying.  Sakura didn’t speak any further.  She cradled him against her chest.  Her fingers tangled in his hair, their tips rubbing soothing circles over his scalp.  One hand descended to trace sweet nothings into the skin of his back.

His ear lay flat over her heart.

_Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump._

_I’m here.  I’m here.  I’m here._

To the sound of her heartbeat, night continued dreamlessly into morning.

She was still there when he opened his eyes.


End file.
